As he began to scrub at the memories, she screamed. Thin streams of blood trickled from her nose, over her chapped, dry lips, then stained her once clean shirt.
Adam wanted her master to see Alex Stone in action. Adam wanted this girl’s failure to anger Tristan as much as Alex winning angered him now. Revenge coaxed Adam to put more force behind his intrusion on this girl. For the first time since Alex Stone entered his life, Adam realized she may be out of it, for good, before the end of the conference. Her death might hit Jason hard, but he would get over it. The end of that relationship meant Jason had proven his loyalty to him and Nikki. Adam knew Jason wouldn’t let a human get between him and what he wanted most: power and a place at the table.
Later, back at the compound, Jason paced the narrow space between the door and Adam’s desk. In an effort to defend his decision to let the girl go, Adam had fielded call after call from minor Council members all day. He looked about done being polite.
“We have her location,” Adam snarled before emptying the short glass of Scotch. “I have a team tracking her as we speak.”
Jason wasn’t sure who was on the other end of the call, but he was sure it wasn’t Conner. Conner expected him to call later—without Adam. The video clip of Alex and the Cantu was one of those things Conner needed to know about right away.
“I don’t have to explain myself to you, Valen,” Adam hissed. “Who cares if she dies? If we get what we want, I don’t care if they stake her in the sun until she’s dust!”
He dropped the mobile device on the desk and scratched through his wavy salt and pepper locks. Jason could see the frustration wrapped tightly around him. Adam was not used to being questioned or doubted, not by anyone. The lower voting members of the Council offering up their two cents on this matter did nothing but make him want to kill.
He felt the vibration in the air before he heard Adam growl out loud. Silently, Jason watched as Adam pulled back every bit of anger he had, then he looked up at Jason with a calm expression.
“Why are you standing there like a guilty child?” Adam sighed. “Sit, please.”
Jason did as he was told. “You really shouldn’t let them get to you like that. You really don’t have to explain anything to them.”
Adam gave him a slow nod, but he wasn’t focused on Jason—he could tell. His brain was elsewhere. With a look of defeat, Adam sat back in the chair then covered his face with his massive hands. They dropped suddenly and he grinned.
“You’re right,” he replied. “I’m so used to playing politics, I’ve forgotten my place. Second chair at the table means I don’t have listen to them blather on about tradition. I know what I’m doing, and if they don’t like it, so what?”
It was strange to see Adam so rattled by the nonsense of the lower chamber members. Sometimes it was hard to imagine Adam ever being one of them. His rise to the high chamber was bloody and hard fought. Jason remembered all too well what that cost Adam—and him.
Chapter 6
Her business card was moist and wrinkled. Kit held it tight as she weaved her way through the mid-afternoon crowd at DFW International Airport. She couldn’t shake the feeling of being followed. Since boarding the flight in Miami, Kit had the creepiest feeling of being watched, and she didn’t like it one bit. As a feline shifter, her senses were heightened, especially to threats—seen and unseen. Right now, she couldn’t see trouble, but she could feel it through every pore.
When she deplaned in Dallas, that vibe grew stronger. After she passed through the sliding glass exit doors, she grabbed the door handle of the Uber she’d called on her way down the concourse.
“Shit,” she hissed as something on the underside of the handle pricked her ring finger on her left hand. She immediately put the tiny wound to her mouth.
“You alright?” the young driver asked as she opened the back door.
“Yeah, thanks.”
Kit tossed her overnight bag next to her on the backseat. Kit Blaze, Vegas call girl, told the driver where to go as she looked back nervously.
“First time in Dallas?” he drawled at her through the rearview.
“Yes,” Kit replied as she examined her finger.
“Well, welcome to Texas,” he chuckled, put the car in motion, and began to tell her about all the tourist stuff she should see while she was here.
Kit Blaze was not a sightseer. Kit Blaze was a mover—a shaker. Movers and shakers didn’t sightsee, they were seen. As she took one last look behind them, a wave of relief washed over her. That feeling—creepy and heavy—just disappeared like magic. She didn’t care why. All the tension she’d felt for the last four hours just melted away. With her head against the seat, she closed her eyes and relaxed.
“You okay, ma’am?” her driver asked her through the rearview.
“Yes, fine,” she grinned. “Thank you.”
The white Toyota Prius with the weird little symbol on the front windshield glided down the highway headed for a nice boutique hotel a few blocks away from Alex Stone’s headquarters. The driver noted the light traffic and perfect spring-like weather for a November afternoon. She just tuned him out. Alex would meet her in the hotel bar. Kit sighed. A good, stiff drink was just what she needed right now.
“Where are you going in such a hurry?” Ivy hummed as she followed Alex out the front door and to the elevators. “Hot date?”
“Lunch meeting,” she replied over her shoulder. “New model. Might put Vic’s angels to shame next Valentine’s Day.”
“Anyone I know?” Ivy grinned as Alex pressed the button a couple of times. She needed to get to the hotel before Kit to make sure she wasn’t followed.
“I doubt it,” Alex grinned back.
When the doors opened they both stepped inside the steel box. Ivy pressed the lobby button then leaned back against the wall. “Maybe you should at least tell me where you’re meeting, just in case, I mean.”
“In case what?” Alex answered as the numbers ticked down from thirty-five.
“You get hung up,” Ivy shrugged, “or worse, God forbid.” She raised an expertly arched brow. On the bottom floor, they stepped out together. Ivy kept pace with Alex all the way to the revolving glass doors then Alex turned to face her.
“It’s just lunch,” she said with a shake of her head. “Go back upstairs, please.”
“Swear,” Ivy stayed rooted to the spot. “Swear to God this has nothing to do with Jason Stavros.”
Alex rolled her eyes, place her right hand over her heart and raised her left. Ivy just stared into her eyes for about five seconds then walked away. “This is business,” she heard Alex say to her back.
It seemed odd that she thought she felt Alex’s stare burn a hole through the back of her head as she waited for the elevator. When she stepped inside again, Alex was gone. All the way back up, Ivy pushed the urge to follow her down. That fight she had with her own conscience had begun. Ivy wasn’t an operative—not that kind anyway. Her degree was in Psychology. At Quantico, she was the best profiler in her class.
The doctor looked so proud at Ivy’s graduation. She wondered what Alex could have done had she been allowed to have a regular life. Instead, Alex was battle trained. There was no way Ivy could trail her and not get caught.
As Ivy passed her assistant, she told her to hold her calls. Inside her office, at her desk, she tried to work. From her mobile, she dialed his number. One ring. Two rings. Then he picked up.
“Ms. Rose,” he sounded happy. He was never happy. “How nice to hear from you.”
“Dr. Carlisle,” she replied. “I just wanted to get you caught up. This seemed like as good a time as any, but I can call back if you’re busy.”
“On the contrary,” he chuckled. “I’m never too busy for you. How are things going?”
Ivy suddenly felt sick to her stomach. His sweet demeanor was so out of character that sh
e thought she would vomit. But her guilt gnawed at her insides too. Dr. Carlisle did seem to care for Alex like a father should—sometimes anyway.
“Fine,” she answered. “Alex just left to meet with the hooker, so we have some time.”
She could hear a slight electrical hum in the background. Then it disappeared with the sound of a door as it slammed shut. Then a weird silence.
“Do you have any idea what she might be doing?” he asked. “With a hooker, I mean?”
“I believe she has information for Alex regarding the attempt on Jason Stavros a couple of weeks ago.”
“Thank you for the update,” he stated with another chuckle, “but, you could have emailed that report.”
“Right,” Ivy sighed. “Well, if there’s nothing else . . .”
“I’d like to ask about my daughter and the vampire,” he stated. “Are they lovers or not?”
Ivy felt her cheeks burn with embarrassment. Not once in the entire time she had been on this assignment had he ever asked about any of Alex’s companions. It just felt weird to even be discussing this with her father.
“I’m pretty sure she’s slept with him,” Ivy answered.
He was silent for what seemed like a long time, but it was only a few seconds.
“And has he fed from her?”
“I have no idea.”
“I thought she told you everything.”
“She wouldn’t tell me that,” Ivy replied. “And if I asked, she’d get suspicious.”
“Maybe. But I’d like you to ask anyway.”
Her stomach was doing backflips now. Ask a superpowered ex-assassin if she let a vampire drink her blood? Right. How would she make that sound like a casual question?
“Why would you care what she does with Jason Stavros?”
“Because I need to know,” he replied with just a hint of anger in his voice. “And you take your orders from me, so . . .”
“How am I supposed to bring that up exactly?”
He laughed at her. “The same way you bring up everything else. Open that pretty, little mouth and ask. Ask her if he’s fed from her and how.”
“What do you mean, how?” Ivy said.
“A bite,” he replied in an annoyed tone. “Was she stupid enough to let that happen?”
Ivy’s head began to pound. “Fine. Anything else?”
“Yes,” he answered. “Are you still seeing that escort, what’s his name—Mason Creed?”
“Not the way you mean,” she replied.
Again, the odd silence. Then she heard him cough. “I think you should make one more appointment with Mr. Creed.”
Ivy looked at the phone then put it back to her ear. “Why?”
Dr. Carlisle had never seemed to care, one way or the other, about her relationship with Creed. Although Ivy never offered up any real reason for continuing the arrangement, she let him and Leland Ramsey believe he was a wealth of information regarding Alex and what she did for the five or so years she went off radar. Truth was, Ivy had known about Mason Creed for at least two years before they discovered he had some connection to Alex. Once the doctor got wind of his relationship with Alex, he went ballistic at first.
“You’re not serious,” she remembered him practically barking at her over the morning debrief. “My daughter! What proof do you have?”
Back then, she thought Dr. Jonathan Carlisle’s bark was much worse than his bite. Over the years, Ivy found that his bite could be deadly, in more ways than she had ever imagined.
Sweat had rolled down her spine as she sat in that cramped little office of his at Area 51. It was practically a freezer every day, but with him barking in her face, it felt like the desert.
“He told me,” she almost whispered. “I mean, he bragged about having this tough, little black chick on his payroll for a while. He described her perfectly. I’m sorry, Dr. Carlisle.”
When he crushed the stainless steel coffee mug like it was made of Styrofoam, Ivy knew he didn’t just create supplements for the new crop of supersoldiers that would be known as The Trackers, he took them as well.
“What else did he say?” he grunted, which brought her attention back to him. “Does he know where she is now?”
“I don’t think so,” she replied. “He said she just took off.”
His brow furrowed as his usual expression turned hard and mean. That poor coffee carafe slowly turned into an expensive paperweight. After he pressed it into a funky shape, he took in a deep breath then pushed it out.
“Keep close to him for now,” he stated in his usual authoritative tone.
“Of course, Doctor,” she replied.
He really didn’t have to tell her to stay close to Creed. Back then, she would have done just about anything to stay close to him. Well, if she were being honest with herself, she was doing anything he asked to stay next to him.
Now, as Dr. Carlisle laid out her new assignment, she regretted doing it. Regret was a strange beast. No matter how much she tried to turn it into a memory, her time with Mason Creed morphed into a deep regret. She’d allowed herself to be used by both Strategic and him.
“I think he knows more than he’s telling you, Agent Rose,” she heard Dr. Carlisle say. “I think he may be using you for something. Let’s see if you can find out before it’s too late.”
She was snapped back to the present by the same words she was thinking. Strange? Not really, she reminded herself. Everybody uses everybody else, don’t they?
“He’s using me to get to Alex,” she sniffed. “He wants a blood sample.”
Dr. Carlisle chuckled for some reason. “Why?”
“I don’t know,” she stated. “I’m just supposed to get it for him. If I don’t, he’s threatened to tell Alex about our relationship.”
“How much time do you have to produce it?”
Ivy drew in a breath. “Not much.”
“Then let’s not disappoint the man,” he said. “I’ll have a sample sent to you immediately.”
Ivy couldn’t believe what she was hearing. This man had no concern for his own daughter’s safety. “What?”
“You’ll have a sample first thing in the morning,” he repeated.
“If it doesn’t show traces of the supplement, he’ll suspect,” she answered as she shot the finger at the phone.
“You let me worry about what needs to show up in her blood,” he answered. “You just let him know you have the sample, but you want to meet with his boss personally to deliver it.”
“And if he says no?”
“I guess you’ll have to convince him to agree.”
“How?”
“The same way you got to him in the first place,” he said with that irritating chuckle of his. “On your back.”
The hotel she booked for Kit wasn’t far. For a November afternoon, the air was fresh, and a big yellow sun kept the chill away as she strolled toward her destination.
She had to give Kit props for contacting her through the company. Discretion was a priority. Kit understood that better than anyone. Whatever she knew, Kit was ready to tell. But was Alex ready to hear it?
If Jason was lying, what would she do? If someone else was in play, it was too late to hope for an elimination of the threat before Romania. Her luck was never that good. The problem would follow them. It would follow them all the way to a city steeped in the past, a city where an Irish writer first saw a Romanian Count feed on human blood and live forever.
Chapter 7
“I consider her my friend,” Mistress Bianca said. “I don’t understand why you can’t just tell her the truth.”
Michael tossed a couple of shirts in the soft leather weekend bag as he cradled the phone between his shoulder and ear. “We’re trying to protect them, Mistress—all of them.”
“And your father agrees with this plan?�
� she sighed. Then she giggled. “Of course he does.” She fell silent and Michael felt his heart sting at asking someone he respected and loved, in an odd sort of way, to lie to someone she considered a friend.
That thought seemed strange though. A powerful pure-blood vampire with an allegiance to a human—who would have thought? When she sighed again, Michael knew she had just agreed to back the story he would tell Alex. Michael Gale, A.K.A Michael Dean, private counsel for Ashblood Manor and, as such, for Mistress Bianca as well.
“Thank you, Mistress,” he offered, but he knew she was not happy. “I owe you one, again.”
“Yes, you do Michael Dean,” emphasis on his false name. “And I will collect, one day.” The line disconnected before he could say goodbye.
Being indebted to her was not a good thing, or so he’d been told. Michael was a man of his word though, and whatever she asked of him in return, he would do.
Checking his voicemail one last time, he listened to a message Alex had left asking him to call her when he got a chance. She was set to return to Vegas tomorrow night, so he was catching his own flight back in three hours. The company jet was being used by his brothers, so he was stuck with a commercial flight from JFK. He didn’t care. The only thing that mattered was to get to Vegas before Alex Stone.
His phone buzzed in his hand. Another text. The car service would be there in twenty minutes. He dropped his bag at the private elevator then did one last check. His briefcase contained his tablet, a couple of magazines, and pens—pretty standard fare for a last minute flight.
Bianca offered one of her private apartments, in case Alex checked, and the use of a pretty sweet ride while he was there. The 918 Spyder looked like a car a douche lawyer in Vegas might drive. As Porsches went, it was pretty awesome though. He deleted the picture Bianca sent, picked up his briefcase, and placed it next to the bag by the elevator. His phone buzzed once more.
By Blood Sworn Page 7